JOURNAL ENTRY DECEMBER 27, 1978 - EAST VILLAGE

This morning I had driven Ande's father's car from Brookline to Route 3 onto 128 past the snowfields of the Blue Hills and then headed south to the great metropolis of New York City. Big Blue has a radio station atop its granite bald summit. The view from the tower encompassed Boston from Cape Ann to Nantasket. As a teen I had skied the short trails, but always revel in the dark blue of the Atlantic stretching east into the Atlantic. Boston had once been my hometown. My mother had called this morning and told me to take care of myself. My one goal was to make enough money to pay off their mortgage and then send them to Hawaii. Getting a regular job was the only way to achieve that wish, but 9 to 5s bored me shitless and I stepped on the Cutlass' gas.

Visiting my parents had been comforting as had seeing my brothers, sisters, and aunts and uncles and our next door neighbors, the Menconis for Christmas dinner. I loved my parents. My older brother was with Pattie, who was working for the CIA My sisters Pam and regina seemed happy, and Regina's beau was a good man from Hartford, if there is such a thing. My younger brother Patrick played guitar in the basement, while Michael, obviously wanted to tell everyone his secret. I had warned him that confessing you're gay was one sure way to ruin Christmas and he said, "Maybe this summer."

I felt bad about not having any gifts and even worse getting some. Andy was my only friend at the gathering. Every other friend from grammar and high school and college have vanished into the amnesia of the past. My old girlfriends are ghosts; Linda Imhoff, Hilde Hartnett, Janet Stetson, and Jackie Collins. I'm not sure if I abandoned them or they deserted me.

The Cutlass sped on I-95 through the marshlands of the Neponset River. The highway rose at Sharon onto a plateau all the way to Providence. The Interstate had destroyed miles of neighborhoods, but at least the engineers had banked the pavement and I hit 80 past the empty harbor.

Farther along the State Prison rises atop a high berm. Hundreds of convicts locked to serve sentence for their crimes or someone else's wrong. Snow topped the field of the pine barrens, until I reached New London and the nuclear sub bases of Groton. Within a half hour I crossed the Connecticut River, which I considered the southern boundary of New England.

At Christmas dinner my family asked, "Will you ever return to Boston?"

"I don't think so."

I love New England; Maine and the White Mountains, but I had taught English at South Boston High during the bussing riots. The city of my birth was filled with racists. My old friends called me a 'race traitor. I could fight them all. The day before Christmas I rode the trolley into Park Street. None of the women appealed to me.

I left the city in 1976. I adopted the sums of the East Village as home, even though my first friends had yet to come to New York. My good friend, Andy, was remained in Boston playing funk in an all-black band. Neil had left Staten Island to study Medicine in Dagupan City in the Philippines, Libby had flown to Paris to seek fame and fortune as a fashion model. I had new friends now, but I felt I would desert them at one point.

LATER

I'm trapped in Brooklyn. Covid has surged out of control, yet plenty of unmasked people wander the streets of Clinton Hill, as if they are immune to the virus, but many of my friends have been struck up by this variant despite having been vacced twice.

A road trip would be perfect except there's nowhere I can go, as I will have a series of tests at NYU Hospital to assess the health of my liver.

I've been invited to ski in Tahoe, sun in florida, and fly over to London to reside at Goodenough University. Mostly I want to see my families in Thailand, however Nu says that everything in Shut down in Pattaya and Mem is concerned about leaving the house.

Oh, for the world to be free again.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 2 by Peter Nolan Smith

“We have nothing like this in England,” Brock said, as he filmed the Mississippi spreading onto its broad flood plain north of St. Louis.

"Is this going to be in your movie?" I hadn't asked too many questions about his Barry Flanagan project.

"You never know what will mean something in a film." Brock was a one-man crew. Two, if you counted me a driver. He stopped shooting. "But this film is for Barry Flanagan. He's in the last stages of his disease. Imagine yourself trapped in a failing body. You'd want to see all this, wouldn't you?"

"And more." I had seen a good part of this world."

"Barry just has the view out his house on Ibiza."

"I imagine it's a good view." My French side of the family came from the northern Catalan of Perpignan. I had never crossed the seas to the Mallorca.

"Santa Eulalia del Río dates back to before the Romans. There are too many tourists, but this time of year."

"Same as here."

We traveled US 54 to Vandalia. We counted twenty-three cars and fourteen pick-ups on the state road. I turned northwest to Paris on US 25. The rental Ford hit 80 on the straightaways. The V6 could go faster given the right conditions.

"Aren't you scared of police?" Brock aimed the camera at me.

"They're out on the Interstates hunting revenue." I hadn't seen a cop car since a Highway Patrol cruiser in St. Louis stopped me for speeding. "Remember this is the Flyover, but it's not a wasteland."

Miles and miles of newly plowed fields wasn't much of a thrill, but a week's parole from New York was soothing to my eyes.

"No, I wouldn't say that." Brock put down his camera.

"How do people live out here?" Brock shook his head, as we passed an abandoned junkyard. Both of us were hungry, but US 24 offered little in the way of eateries. We were holding off for ribs in KC.

"Farming."

"I feel like we're remaking the last chapters of COLD BLOOD." Brock had chosen Truman Capote's opus about two drifters murdering a Kansas farmer as his travel book.

"Not much has changed out here since then." My book was Herman Melville's TYPEE. He had romanticized the Pacific cannibals of the Marquesas. They were good eaters, but I hadn't even opened the tale of a whaler stranded on a cannibal paradise.

"The last time I came through the Midwest was in 1994 in a Studebaker Hawk."

"That's why I wanted you with me. You're American."

I pressed PLAY for Arthur Lee and Love's IF 6 WAS 9 and my foot hit the gas.

The Ford was all go.

It hit 90.

Rain splashed off the four-laner. The sky was an ominous black. The tornado of THE WIZARD OF OZ belonged to Kansas. That flat state lay straight ahead.

"Stormy weather." It scared Brock.

"Nothing to worry about." I slowed the Ford to under 50 to prevent us from aero-planing into the scenery.

The rain stopped after a torrential deluge and the sun broke through the thick clouds. Kansas City rested on a hill. A golden nimbus transform it into Oz.

I was no Dorothy and stepped on the gas.

"I love America." Brock had been filming for two minutes.

I doubted any of it would make his film.

"My friend, Joe, ran away to Kansas City in 1965. He was 13 and wanted to see if there were any pretty girls there."

"As Wilbert Harrison sang in that song." Brock had a good voice typical to the Scots and sang the chorus.

"Joe found none and the cops sent him back to Boston."

"But he got here and here is a long way away from there."

"And that's the truth." I aimed at KC, thinking of pretty girls.

Downtown Kansas City mimicked St. Louis' purgatory. The pretty girls were heifer-fat from fast food. We booked a room in Kansas not far from Ray Santo's house. The South Shore native was free tonight and we met for ribs. Brock and I got sloppy. Ray stayed clean.

"I have to play later." Ray was a drummer in the KC scene.

"We're coming with you." Brock ordered another round. The three of us left the restaurant in a taxi.

"Good idea, Kansas City PD are always on the hunt for drunk drivers.

"But not drunks." Ray gave the driver directions.

"Not yet." I muttered, because Kansas was next to Oklahoma and that state didn't believe in curves, unless they were connected to a tornado.

Five minutes after we arrived at the crowded nightclub, Ray hit the stage. The band performed a tight set of country-western music. Brock yee-hahed during a break.

"How do you know Ray?"

"He went out with my sister." Ray had driven a red Corvette. He played good hockey and shoot better pool. My mother didn't approve of his dating my younger sister. "Back in 1970."

"That's almost thirty years ago."

"Yep." I hadn't seen Ray in too long. I yee-hahed and Brock joined me.

Drinking beer in Kansas was good and listening to country music was even better.

We were all friends for life and called it a night at closing. We dropped ray at his apartment and the taxi took us to our hotel. I fell asleep dreaming of my wife in Thailand.

Mem was not Dorothy and my son Fenway was my Fenway.

The next morning after coffee and donuts at the motel I drove us to Overland Park. Flanagan's Hare statue was supposedly in the middle of the Johnson County Community College campus. Everything about the school said suburbs, except for one thing.

Guns were not allowed on campus.

A uniformed guard gave us a pass. Our parking space was specified as 'visitor'. The art director met us on the walkway.

"School's not in session."

JCCC offered its student body of 37,000 the chance of changing lives through learning. It was a big school.

"That's fine. We're here to see the Hare." Brock broke out his equipment, as we entered the Administration Building.

"Well, here it is." The director stood before the 11-foot statue of a Hare on a Bell. I liked the one in St. Louis better. It had been more Nijinsky.

Brock asked our host about the Hare. I made myself scarce during the interview. I liked to know nothing and pulled out my cellphone to call New York.

No one answered, so I visited the Nerman Museum attached to JCCC. The sky was threatening heavy rain and hard winds. This was tornado country.

The statues and paintings appealed to the flatness of the Midwestern psyche. I tried to Vulcan mind-link with the atmosphere without success. I left the museum and reached the car before the sky opened for a deluge. I popped in a CD and read TYPEE.

An hour later Brock ran to the Ford in a downpour. He carried the camera bag under his coat. I was listening to Dave Van Ronk's BOTH SIDES NOW.

"Sorry about the wait." The Scot sat in the car. Rain dripped off him.

"The movie's more important than me." Brock wiped his face with a paper towel.

"That was great. I interviewed seven people. They really understand the Hare."

"So they don't think it's a rabbit?"

"They think it's something much more."

"Like what?" I was curious.

"You'll see."

"See what?"

"The difference between a rabbit and a hare."

"If you say so." I backed out of the parking spot. "Where to now?"

"North to Iowa." There was a Flanagan statue in Des Moines.

"Right." I headed toward the highway. It was the fastest way out of here and I was happy, because 'North to Iowa' was as good a destination as any and my friend Rockford would be waiting in Iowa City.

THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN MAINE by Peter Nolan Smith on Kindle

In the winter of 1991 a British friend and I drove north from a snowless New York to find winter. Our trip took us through New England to the end of US 1 at Fort Kent, Maine. The river was frozen solid and the snow was chest deep. I wanted to forge on to Canada, but my friend had overstayed his visa. Disappointed by this setback we spent the night in Fort Kent, where we discovered that the prettiest girls in Maine are not all female.

It was a long way from New York.

And ever farther than from Miami Beach.

THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN MAINE is a photo-roman of that trip north.

Photos by Peter Nolan Smith

To purchase THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN MAINE by Peter Nolan Smith on Kindle for $1.99, please go to the following URL

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LCC0L40

THANK YOU

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER by Peter Nolan Smith [Kindle Edition]

In the Spring of 2009 a British filmmaker asked me to drive him around the Midwest. Brock Dundee was shooting a movie about a famous sculpter's statues and the artist's reaction to seeing them long after their completion. Barry didn't have long to live. Brock and I were friends from the 90s. "I don't drive and you'd be the perfect guide to America." I agreed to the road trip. It was spring in the Fly-over; the Mississippi in flood, St. Louis in ruins, Indian mounds, cheap hotels, long-lost friends, dirt roads, no highways, and always the destination of seeing another Hare statue. We drove 3000 miles in seven days to see five bronze hares. Before this trip I ceased to see things. I only looked at them. Brock taught me to see again as did his movie. His gift was a powerful thing. TO PURCHASE ROADS OF THE FLYOVER, PLEASE GO TO THE FOLLOWING URL http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KLCNQ3A

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 4 by Peter Nolan Smith

Heading north we passed rivers on the verge of bursting their banks.

"Last year Cedar Rapids was inundated by a flood, but we should be all right." The sky held no promise of rain and the radio weatherman forecasted a pleasant day for Northern Iowa and Miinnesota. I stepped on the gas. Everyone on I-380 was traveling ten miles over the speed limit. I kept pace at 85.

North of Cedar Rapids we got off the highway and twenty minutes later Brock spotted buffalo grazing on long prairie grass.

"Stop."

I braked the rented Ford in a parking lot.

A state ranger was checking the wooly bison.

"They once roamed the Great Plains in the millions, but were reduced to 750 by 1890." The small herd was fenced into a park and he said, as Brock filmed him, "This isn't a petting zoo, so I have to make sure no one thinks it is."

A good-sized weighed more than a ton. One came up to the fence and Brock touched its head. He passed me the film camera and said, "Keep me in focus. Barry's going to love this."

Brock and I took a break and ate a late breakfast of left-over ribs from Des Moines. They hadn't gone bad in the back seat. The sun was burning away the clouds and Brock put on a KC Royals baseball cap which he had bought in that city two days ago.

"How many miles you think we've driven so far.

"Almost a thousand." Most of it had been off the Interstate, but roads were straight through the farmlands. Brock lived in London with his wife and two kids. "If we drove a thousand miles from London, we'd be in Poland."

"Which probably looks like this."

"Maybe." I had been no farther east in Europe than Berlin and Germany looked nothing like Iowa. I dumped my gnawed ribs into the trash. Brock wiped his hands on the back of his jeans. He was getting to be a real American.

Corn was everywhere.

Brock shot everything.

"This will be Barry's last trip to America."

"You know I haven't really looked at his sculptures." My daydreams were dominated by premonitions of seeing my son and daughter in the coming month. This driving job for Brock would pay for a ticket to Thailand.

"You shouldn't look at anything." Brock put down his camera. "You have to see or hear or feel Art. Open your mind to another dimension."

"I'll try." We had one more Hare statue ahead and I gripped the wheel with both hands.

Brock was already asleep.

I hadn't gotten enough sleep last night.

Driving through a forlorn valley leading to the Mississippi a giant crane crossed the two-laner and I swerved to avoid the collision, thinking that the big bird was an alien from outer space.

"Where are we?" Brock asked without alarm.

"Minnesota." I couldn't see the crane in my rearview mirror, but even better its body wasn't smeared across the windshield.

"Are you okay?"

"Just fine." I slowed down to 60.

The river widened into a marsh of white reeds. Spring was still distant from this valley. The Mississippi was up ahead.

The Father of All Waters was narrower than its last sighting in Missouri.

"Two centuries ago this marked the East and West."

"Probably still does to some." Brock looked at the passing Mississippi with a glowing wonder, for like any European he thought the West began at the Atlantic.

"Watch out," shouted Brock and I swerved back into the highway.

Cars around the Ford beeped their horns.

"Sorry about that." It wasn't easy driving with closed eyes.

We were almost in Minneapolis and once we checked into the motel I would be done driving for the day.

That night neither of us drank and we called calling our wives from the motel room. Brock spoke to Joanna in London and I talked with Mam in Thailand. Our kids were good and we fell to the black hole of sleep.

The six days on the road was getting to us.

The next morning we woke early and ate the complimentary bagels at the motel. The fresh coffee served its purpose. I drove us to Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The director was waiting for Brock. We were on time. He set up his camera and interview the woman, who spoke about Flanagan's challenge to the status quo by reverting to the representational figure of a Hare. "He's telling a story with each of these bronze pieces. One of fertility and flight."

I wandered out of the museum grounds to cross the highway into another park. I knew no one here. I tried calling New York. No one answered my call. A stranger in this city, but the landscape looked familiar and I realized that Mary Tyler Moore had stood on this spot for the opening of her long-running TV show. Not much seemed to have happened to the city since the series cancellation in 1977.

I returned to the sculpture garden and stood before the statue. It was a rabbit to me and not a hare. Brock motioned for me to join him. It was time to go. Tomorrow we had a plane to catch in Chicago.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Chapter 1 by Peter Nolan Smith

The crew met at Miguel Abreau's Gallery on Orchard Street. We were honoring Brock Dundee. The Scotsman had finished filming a documentary about Afghanistan for the UK's MoD. Dannatt joked that Brock was a spy. "James Bond was a Scot same as everyone in MI6." Brock gave the art critic a steely squint. For the rest of the night Dannatt's joke were at everyone's expense other than the happy Scot. Brock was in a good mood. He had money in his pocket. His wife Joanna was selling his painting and his kids were healthy "It's nice to be someplace you can drink a beer without worrying about a bullet chaser." Afghanistan wasn't a joke and Brock asked, "You?" I haven't seen my kids in months." They were on the other side of the world like their mother. "But I'm working on 47th Street." "How's that going?" Brock was familiar with my gig in the diamond district. href="http://www.mangozeen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/me1.jpg"> "I've had better years." I hadn't sold a diamond in a month. Jewelry was the last thing on a man's mind in 2009. "But I'm taking care of my kids." "How'd you like to take a trip?" "Where?" I hoping to hear Thailand. "Chicago-St. Louis-Kansas City-Iowa City-Minneapolis-Chicago." Brock was serious. "I'm doing a film about Barry Flanagan. The Irish sculptor. "Rabbits." "Not, hares." Brock knew Barry. The sculptor was very sick. Brock's project was to film various sculptures around the USA and show them to Barry in Ibiza. "Why do you need me?" I sounded useless. "Because I can't drive." Brock mentioned my pay for the trip. "Count me in." I loved road trip. Two weeks later I met Brock at his midtown hotel. He had been drinking most of the morning. "Left Kabul two days ago." "Well, you're back now." I could smell the Khyber Pass on him. He slept through the taxi ride to JFK. We hit the Sushi Bar at the Jet Blue Terminal for raw tuna and cold saki. An hour later they called our flight. Brock and I boarded the overcrowded 737. I opted for the window seat. Brock lifted his bag to place in the overhead compartment. The chubby steward closed the door on my friend's fingers. "Ouch." "You're drunk and you're not flying to Chicago on this plane." I explained to the pilot that Brock had returned from Afghanistan. In 1842 only one British soldier escaped the fall of Kabul. The army had numbered 15,000. I couldn't say what he had been doing over there, but I believed he had been making a film. I knew his protectress the honorable Alice. "We'll put you on a flight for tomorrow morning." I thanked the pilot and ordered Brock not to say a word. We booked into the JFK Ramada. The bar was filled with Deadheads migrating from the legendary band's New York stand. They came from all over the world. We hung out with two guys from California. They were both named Steve. Brock and I caught the morning flight. The flight attendants showed us to our seats. Two hours later we got the rented car at O'Hare. I drove on the Interstate. I-70 took us to St. Louis, however the truck traffic on the Interstate was a horror. "You mind, if you take back roads." "That's why you're here. This film is as much about the trip as it is the sculpture. Barry's dying. He wants to see the world." "Then I'll show it to him." I got off the highway. Joliet was on the Des Plainnes River. We passed the Correctional Institute. It seemed to be the only business in town. "They filmed THE BLUES BROTHERS here." Brock was a film buff. We crossed the river at West Jackson and passed under I-80 on the way to Peoria. There was little traffic on the river road. The Illinois River valley was wide. Once hundreds of ships plied the river's muddy current. Today Peoria was a ghost town of abandoned factories. Steel was turning to rust. Globalization had not treated the city with kindness, however the Caterpillar factory was working a double shift. Someone still had money for gas and I stepped on the accelerator to get us out of town. We drove through the farmlands. Across the river. We had planned to stay in the cities. Brock said, "St. Louis is a zombie movie backdrop." A suburban motel was cheap wasn't far from the Cahokia Indian Mounds. I had slept atop them in 1972. Brock and I shared a room. We went down to the bar for happy hour. On my third margharita my cell rang. It was Mam in Sriracha. My son Fenway was sick. I had to wire money. The only Western Union was in East St. Louis. I drove into a dark neighborhood of abandoned buildings and empty lots. The people were friendly. I send $150. On the way back to motel a highway cop stopped me on the highway. The trooper said I was speeding. I explained my story. He believed me and let me go. I was a lucky drunk. In the morning we filled the rental car with gas and drove over to the Canokia Indian Mounds. "These were the largest structures in North America until the 1900s." Canokia's population was greater than any 13th Century city in Europe. "I camped on the top of that mound in 1973." "A hippie?" "On my way to LA." We climbed to the top of Monk's mound. It was over a hundred feet above the plain and the Mississippi shone in the distance. The tall trees blotted out most of the present. I stood in the year 1277. American culture had constructed a huge mound of garbage closer to St. Louis. in 1996 Barry Flanagan erected the Nijinsky Hare next to the new St. Louis Hockey Arena. I recounted Bobby Orr's goal against the Blues to Brock. I doubted the Checkerdome's replacement had a shot of that iconic goal. "What do you think of the Hare?" Brock broke out his camera. The sturdy Scot was shooting commando-style. "The Hare is good for all." Brock interviewed workers and commuters coming off the trolley. Everyone liked the Hare. We wandered up the Mississippi. This was Mark Twain land. I turned west at Lousiana. We were on our way to Kansas City and according to Wilbur Harrison, "They had a lot of pretty girls there."